Is the US adopting the gray zone cyber playbook?

The report analyzes how nation-states are increasingly using cyber-enabled, reversible, and deniable disruptions as part of gray zone pressure campaigns, highlighting alleged impacts on Venezuela’s oil sector and lessons from Russia’s hybrid tactics. It explains that these campaigns rely on persistent access, identity and supply-chain abuse, and calibrated timing to erode confidence and impose costs without triggering open conflict, and argues that integrating cyber operations with sanctions and diplomacy heightens ambiguity, escalation risk, and stability concerns.